


a postulate on attraction

by rievu



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, a challenge to myself in regards to length and subject material, how to combine tenderness with mathematics, liberal use of metaphors and similes included
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19056604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: But sometimes, Ryder wonders if it’s her fate to be illimitably drawn to things, like functions struggling to reach infinity and drawing close and closer to the limit. And that is how Ryder only thinks of asymptotes and the state of infinity when she stares in Jaal Ama Darav’s brightly gleaming eyes in the darkness of her tech lab.// how ryder tries to calculate the trajectory of her relationship with jaal ama darav in terms of science and mathematics





	1. asymptote

**Author's Note:**

> **asymptote** — a line that the curve of a function tends towards as the independent variable of the curve approaches some limit (usually infinity) i.e. the distance between the curve and the line as it approaches zero
> 
> // a prologue

Sara Ryder is her mother’s daughter. A scientist, an academic, a student of the ages. Her mother taught her the fundamental principles of science and mathematics when Sara was young, and her mother also bought her books upon books about the worlds and legacies beyond their own. If anything, her mother was the one to teach her how to hypothesize and how to dream. Her brother, Scott, is more like their father — bold and brave and athletic and strong — but Sara always prefers a data-pad over a sniper rifle.    
  
Perhaps it is the classic Ryder stubbornness that makes her study engineering in school instead of following her father’s footsteps. She finds her own comforts in the logical structures of drones and rovers and engines and circuits. She even takes a few history courses that overlap with her degree like Prothean technology or the history of salarian industrial development. Whatever it was, Sara takes it and relishes in the sheer fact of doing it. If there is any chance to diverge away from her father’s expectations, she takes it with a fit of teenage revelry. It’s ironic, actually. This is nothing more than sheer Ryder stubbornness that trickled its way down to her. It’s a concept that’s genetically impossible — genes are for physical traits, not personality — but the trait is so ingrained in her that she has to wonder how she managed to inherit it so identically.    
  
Scott is different. He doesn’t try so hard to reject their father’s legacy like Sara does. He goes off and becomes a soldier, just like their father. Mini Alec, they nickname him in the ranks. Sara knows that the nickname gets on his nerves. This is one thing that they share between the two of them: their innate urge to find their own path instead of their father’s. But unfortunately, it’s something that he can’t avoid. It’s almost asymptotic: the way his own efforts always curve back towards their father’s shadow. Sara also feels the same curve but never quite as strongly as Scott. In fact, she doesn’t pay it much attention. There would always be a limit to that curve — infinity in a function’s case — and it is Alec Ryder himself for their case. Simple as that. Her father could stay in the Alliance and do his N7 work for as long as he wanted if only he left her and Scott alone to do what they wanted. Easy and simple as that for an engineer. Somewhat less simple for a soldier, but nonetheless, it’s the truth as Sara sees it.   
  
But that isn’t meant to be. One discovered AI project later, and Sara and Scott are both shut down. Stopped in their tracks. Slammed against an intangible limit. Once again, their limit is Alec Ryder himself, and his irredeemable act makes them irredeemable too. Sara gets the lighter end of the deal; installing security measures for Prothean archaeologists isn’t half as bad as staring at the mass relay on Arcturus for hours on end. At least Sara’s directly in the field, working with her hands. Scott has to see ships leave on the adventures that he wants, always close and always out of reach.    
  
How ironic is it that science is the one to cause their father’s downfall and in turn, theirs as well? Sara looks over the reports that led to their father’s dismissal and has to admit that there’s a mathematical beauty in the way he tried to build the A.I. She recognizes the coding style and the solutions her father takes to circumvent certain issues and problems. It’s the same style of troubleshooting that she herself adopts when she’s dealing with something particularly annoying in the code. But still, the irony is bright and clear to her.   
  
So, when her father offers her a one-way trip to another galaxy, Sara only considers a set of two things. One. Her mother and her inexorable spirit when it came to pushing the boundaries. Two. The chance at avoiding the asymptotic nature of her life in the Milky Way. Easy as that. She texts back a quick affirmative before she returns to her work at the Prothean dig for the last time.   
  
She contributes to the Initiative as well, building programs and setting up different maintenance mechanisms within the arks. It’s satisfying to see the rewards of her work, bright and bold and clear, within the large panels of the arks. She installs her own code for her own cryo-pod as well. Nothing major. It’s only a minor change that allows the interface to flash a brief smiley face when they take her out of stasis in Andromeda, but it’s something that she manages to hide within layers and layers of other functionalities.    
  
600 years and one smiley face later, she wakes up in Andromeda. 

She tried calculating out equations that could potentially predict their success and drafted countless graphs to project how far they could reach within Andromeda. Nothing pans out, and like Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong does go wrong. Her brother falls into a coma, she cracks her helmet open against the sharp, lightning-laced rocks of Habitat 7, and her father dies to give her the oxygen she needs to live. And oh, the same A.I. that destroyed her family’s careers gets complete access to her physiology. Irony strikes again.

Sara pretends that she isn’t the Pathfinder for the first few days. That her father is simply taking a longer nap than expected. That Scott is going to visit her in a couple of days after he finishes his own set of physical therapy. That this is all just a terrible nightmare. The doctors treating her eye her with too much sympathy as she tinkers around with her drone and solves a few practice problems for fun. But no matter how many math and physics problems she runs through, Sara Ryder quietly realizes that there is no way to run away from the truth. This is the thing that she loves about math; in most cases, there is a single truth that abides by pre-established laws and conceptions.

Reality is far from this case. It’s infuriatingly unpredictable, and no matter how many times she tries, she can’t come up with an equation or an engineered solution to the issue she has on her hands now. Death is final; she cannot bring her father back. She cannot control the way her brother’s body functions. This is the end of things, and there is only one way forward.

So, she sheds her name and keeps it locked up in a world where she had the luxury of living outside of set parameters. She shoulders her last name like armor — one of the few lasting legacies her father gave her — and gives up on resisting her father’s inexorable shadow. She dives completely in and re-emerges as the Pathfinder that the Nexus needs. Her father is no longer there to be a limit for her; she only has herself in this lonely, foreign galaxy.

But sometimes, Ryder wonders if it’s her fate to be illimitably drawn to things, like functions struggling to reach infinity and drawing close and closer to the limit. And that is how Ryder only thinks of asymptotes and the state of infinity when she stares in Jaal Ama Darav’s brightly gleaming eyes in the darkness of her tech lab.


	2. euclidean algorithm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **euclidean algorithm** — a method for finding the greatest common factor of two integers.

She originally comes in to repair her drone at the tech lab.

During the fight to rescue the Moshae, there was a group of kett gathering too close to Jaal and the Moshae. Ryder figured that she had little choice but to order her drone to hover near for additional support. The poor thing ended up going down in a flare of sparks, and it self-destructed with the biggest EMP pulse she’d ever seen from it. The most she managed to salvage from it was its charred hull and the main internal system. She had to weld a new hull and do a number of replacements to make it combat-ready again.

So, Ryder stands there with the remains of her drone as Jaal Ama Darav wordlessly stands up when she enters. The tech lab lights still haven’t activated completely yet, but in the dim shadows, she can see the sheer luminosity of Jaal’s eyes. It’s like he has the entire galaxy trapped inside of his eyes. The two of them stare at each other for a while, but Ryder finally cracks and awkwardly coughs. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” she manages to say.

Jaal tilts his head as he regards her and asks, “Why?”

Ryder shrugs as she moves over to the station beside Jaal’s. It’s the only station left available since Jaal’s staked out the other one beside the wall as his. He even has his cot there and his own living supplies there. That used to be Ryder’s old workspace, but after Jaal moved in, she moved her own supplies to the next station over. Frankly, she was tempted to just repair her drone in her own room, but it’s easier to do major repairs and jobs like welding in the tech lab. Ryder settles down in the chair and searches for her tools as she replies, “I thought you would be by the Moshae’s side.”

She looks up when Jaal mutters, “The doctor insisted that I give the Moshae some peace and quiet. According to the doctor, my hovering does nothing.”

“That’s true,” Ryder concedes. She sees the way Jaal’s eyes flash at that and regrets the way she said her words. She fumbles around for some better way to say it, and she amends, “There isn’t a lot that we can do to hurry along the healing process. Being in the way of doctors can slow down the process too.” She turns back to her drone and in a quieter voice, she says, “I had to learn that the hard way.” 

No amount of shaking woke her brother up. She only ended up disturbing the IV connection, and another nurse had to rush over and fix the problem she made. Ryder then tried building some sort of drone or program to keep a better eye on Scott, but it didn’t speed up his recovery process by any means. As for her father, he was long dead and gone by now. No equation or drone could bring him back now. She tried. It didn’t work.

There’s a long lapse in the conversation between them. Not that they’ve ever had long conversations. Ever since Jaal was assigned to accompany them to Havarl and Voeld, he’s been reticent and wary of them. Understandable, really, considering the angara’s previous experience with the kett. Ryder’s not a particularly sociable person either. That was more of Scott’s domain rather than hers. No, she was more comfortable among her tools and equations. Cora and Vetra were her favorites to consult with because they operated on similar levels of logic. If anything, the most time she spent with Jaal aboard the Tempest were silent work sessions in the tech lab. Occasionally, Peebee would storm in for a certain tool with a piece of remtech under her arm before leaving in a flurry of noise and well-intentioned mess. But that was it.

Ryder steals a glance at Jaal and finds that he’s still staring at her. She flushes pink at the realization that he’s been gazing at her this entire time, and she jerks her gaze back to her drone. She reaches out for a screwdriver and starts working her way through the systems to occupy her mind. It doesn’t work though. The task occupies her hands but not her thoughts as they race onward.

Jaal Ama Darav. 

She can’t puzzle him out which is strange considering his nature. He’s open and honest to a fault. Ryder appreciates the bold-faced honesty, and she doesn’t think that he’s ever lied to her. But other than that, the easy way he handles his emotions and expresses his thoughts in an articulate manner is confusing for her. She doesn’t understand — can’t  _ relate _ — and she wonders how he can bring all of those truths up to the surface and make it look so  _ easy. _ He is equal parts fascinating and confusing, and sometimes, she wishes that there was some sort of part that she could replicate for herself. It’s the engineer part of her that makes her break down systems in her mind and try to visualize each part working together as a whole, but emotions don’t abide by that kind of thinking so easily. 

Ryder jumps when she feels Jaal’s hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him with startled surprise. She doesn’t know how the big angara managed to make his way over to her on such silent steps. Or perhaps she was so engrossed in her thoughts and her work that she didn’t even notice him. Ryder supposes that’s more plausible. It happens to her more often than not.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Jaal tells her. His voice is gentle, almost  _ tender, _ as he says it. “I do not know how humans cope with grief, but it must have been an ordeal for you.”

“Wh—” Ryder sputters. She tenses under his touch, and Jaal pulls his hand away. He dips his head down in apology, but Ryder says, “No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine. Go… Go right ahead.” She laughs bitterly and tells him, “I didn’t mean for the comment to be so heavy like that. Just a bit of regret left, I guess. Engineering only takes you so far when it comes to a person’s life, and in the end, technology never really bridges the gap between life and death. If a person dies, they die, and there’s little we can do about it. Best to leave medical matters up to someone more skilled in it then.”

Jaal observes her before he says carefully, “Liam told me about the previous Pathfinder and your brother.”

The sentence feels like a sucker punch to Ryder’s gut. She draws herself up and stands, screwdriver still held in her white-knuckled grip. She’s at a loss for words though. She doesn’t know what to say. Jaal holds his hand up — a gesture that she recognizes from Liam — and says, “I did not mean to offend. I wished to extend my sorrows to you as well. Loss is a regrettable and painful thing, regardless of species.”

Ryder lets out a soft huff of breath and shakes her head. She drops the screwdriver on the table, and the clatter of the metal against the table is the only sound for a while. After glancing up at Jaal again, she says, “I’m afraid humans don’t share as easily as the angara seem to do. Not all of us are like this, but most of us…” She trails off and shrugs with a helpless laugh. “We don’t know how to deal with it very well. Emotion. You know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Jaal replies frankly.

That gets a real laugh out of Ryder, and Jaal seems startled by it. “Something wrong?” she asks.

“No,” he says sheepishly. He flares the sides of his face, and bioelectricity briefly flickers over his skin before he says, “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh like that before.”

Ryder blinks. “You haven’t?” she asks.

Jaal flaps his hand and tilts his head to the left. His own version of a no. Ryder had to ask Liam about that one, actually. She’s still not as well-versed in angaran culture as Liam is. “No,” he tells her. “In fact, I do not think we have spent much time with each other.”

“We spend time in the tech lab and on missions,” Ryder says. Her tone fall flat though. She knows he’s telling the truth.

“That’s true,” he concedes, but Ryder thinks it’s more for her benefit than his. 

Ryder feels strangely bereft. She knows so little about him, and that bothers her. She doesn’t like the unknown. She’d rather categorize it all into simple, known parts rather than leaving it as unknown. So, she pulls up her chair and gestures for Jaal to sit down as she struggles for some way to get the conversation started. “Uh,” she starts off. Decidedly a terrible start. She doesn’t know how Liam does it. “Well, uh, you’re right,” she says. “We really don’t know much about each other, do we?”

“Not really, no,” Jaal agrees. “I find that I know more about you from other people than yourself.”

“Oh, now that’s a little embarrassing,” Ryder mutters. Jaal chuckles, and she curses herself for not muttering it more quietly. “If it helps, it’s the same for you as well,” she offers up.

“Well, we cannot know more about each other without speaking to each other more often,” Jaal counters. 

Ryder grimaces. “That’s very fair,” she admits. She scratches the back of her neck and idly thinks about the situation. A pity that she doesn’t know more about Jaal. An unknown. She looks at Jaal and wonders if she can even calculate the greatest common factor between the two. 

The thought brings her mother to mind. Her mother once taught her how to find the greatest common factor between two numbers once.  _ “Divide the big number with the small number and keep doing it. Keep doing it until the remainder becomes zero. The last non-zero remainder is the greatest common factor,” _ she remembers her mother saying.  _ “It can take time sometimes, and it can be frustrating sometimes. However, the most important thing is that you keep on trying. Remember that, Sara.” _

Ryder twiddles her thumbs and reaches out for her screwdriver again. She twirls in it her hand before she looks up and says, “Better to start now than never, right?” 

Jaal chuckles and says again, “That’s true.”

Ryder reaches over for a part of her drone and absently starts fixing it as she says, “Well, where do we begin? I’m an engineer by trade, trained in the Milky Way, daughter of the late Alec Ryder.” She pauses and eyes Jaal. “You know this already though.”

“I do,” Jaal says. “But I also know that you are stubborn and true. Liam says that you prefer to keep your thoughts and emotions inside you, far more than I do.” He taps his chest when he says it. “But I do not think so.”

“Oh?” Ryder asks. She pops in a new EMP module in her drone as she rolls the thought in her mind. “Why so?”

Jaal reaches for his own little project. A new rifle mod for his Lanat, if Ryder isn’t mistaken. There are a couple of metal alloys they salvaged off the kett, and Ryder suspects that he’s making some sort of material mod to it to make it easier to handle. Understandable, considering the nature of the weapon. The kickback of the plasma charge was no joke. Despite his work, he continues, “Liam told me of a human saying. Eyes are the window to the soul. I find it to be very true. You speak in simple, logical terms, but your eyes show the emotion that your words do not. You are also stubborn. You take more time to make a decision, but once you make it, you do not change it.” 

“Oh. You’re not wrong. I got that from my father,” Ryder says. “My mother used to call it the classic Ryder stubbornness.” She chuckles a little at that. “My brother might have been the one to follow after my father’s footsteps in the Alliance, but I’m afraid I’m the one more like him personality-wise.” She fiddles with her drone’s systems before she looks up and asks, “What about you? Who do you take after?” She reconsiders her question and adds, “Ah, wait, hm, is this culturally offensive to ask?”

“No, if anything, angara love talking about family,” Jaal says with a smile.”And for future reference, I apologize for any cultural barriers I may push with you. I will let you know if something crosses the line, and I ask that you do the same for me.”

“You seem comfortable with this,” Ryder observes.

Jaal laughs at that and clicks a part into place. “Talking with Liam helped,” he admits.

Ryder shakes her head and ruefully says, “That guy… So sociable.” She bends her head down to get a better look at her drone, but it’s mostly so that she doesn’t have to meet Jaal’s gaze.

“Are you not the same?” he wonders.

Ryder hesitates. Her hands stall on her drone, and she softly replies, “No, I’m afraid I’m not. I don’t do well in social situations. I’m, well, awkward. You know.” She holds up the pieces of her drone for emphasis. “Easier to deal with numbers and logistics rather than people. I rely on Liam and Vetra for that. Enough on that though,” she finishes with a breathy laugh of embarrassment. “Back to the original question though. Your family?”

Jaal sets his Lanat back on his table and starts working on a separate part of the mod. “I think I take after my true mother, Sahuna. She is… Very much like me,” he says. “I have many brothers, many sisters, many mothers. I think I have picked up some of their traits as we have lived together. We are family, knitted together more than anything else in the world.”

Ryder studies Jaal’s expression as he speaks, and even though he’s looking down at his work, she can see the tender fondness in the planes of his face. It’s surprising. Ryder’s unfamiliar with that kind of look on Jaal’s face. She’s used to the quiet wariness that she saw at the beginning, the wild adrenaline after a battle, and fury at the kett. But this? She simply hasn’t been around Jaal enough to really see the kinder nuances like this.

“What is it like being in a large family?” she suddenly asks.

“Wonderful and terrible,” Jaal huffs. “I never had a lack of friends or company, but it also got difficult when I had to go to the bathroom and three other siblings would already be in line.”

“Oh, that’s crazy to think about. Scott and I never really had that kind of issue,” Ryder muses. Her hands deftly move over the drone, rehooking and realigning the VI systems with her omnitool guidance programming, but she keeps on speaking. “If anything, we got lonely. It was fine when we were younger and still lived together, but when we went our separate ways in university, it got lonely.” She gestures to her drone. “I studied engineering and history. He went on to soldier training and eventually got a degree in literature. He loved reading books on his time off, but it meant that we didn’t even have classes or training together. I just liked tinkering with things, liked math and equations and the simplicity of all that, you know? It’s just so much easier, straightforward, manageable.” 

The words keep flowing out of her mouth as easily as her hands deftly work with her drone. It actually startles her. She doesn’t remember talking this much with anyone else that wasn’t Scott before. 

“Do not worry about it. I like tinkering too,” Jaal says. There’s a gleam in his eyes as he softly laughs, “ I like figuring out the parts and functionality to things. It offers some comfort. I remember, I used to have a pet kaerkyn named Alfit. When he died, I was… Curious.”

“You did not.”

Another laugh. “I did.”

Jaal stretches his arms back and regards his half-finished mod before he settles back down in his seat. Ryder watches him move before she turns to her drone and pries off a section of the hull that’s unsalvageable. “I never had a pet, but I had a mini drone that I got for my sixth birthday. I named it Max because there was an abbreviation for maximum power on the side where the battery was,” Ryder says absently. “One day, I accidentally crashed it into the wall and broke it. I tried taking it apart to fix it, but I broke Max permanently.” She looks up at Jaal with a crooked smile. He’s still looking at her instead of returning to work, so Ryder ducks her head and continues, “I promised I wouldn’t do that again to another drone, so I learned how to fix them.” She gestures to the drone on the table. “Like I’m doing right now.”

Jaal remains quiet, and for another moment, the sound of tools clicking against metal are the only sounds that accompany them. But then, Jaal says, “You know, you say you do not do well in social situations, but you speak so fluidly when you talk about something you love. It’s like you come alive.”

Ryder blinks at that and with an embarrassed flush, she says, “Oh. Oh. I, ah, uh, I think this is the most I’ve ever really spoken that wasn’t Initiative business related. Cora and Vetra are great for talking about business, but I wouldn’t want to bore them with twelve hours worth of drone details.”

Jaal aligns one more piece of alloy before he says, “I would be interested.”

“Oh,” Ryder says blankly. That’s the only thing she can really summon up to say.

He looks up at her and mischievously says, “I enjoy tinkering with things, and I have always enjoyed learning how a thing works. This is very much the same.”

“So, are you saying that you want to know how I work?” Ryder asks. Oh, that sounds awkward even to her.

It doesn’t faze him. Jaal shrugs, “Perhaps.” His tone is cryptic to Ryder, and she can’t quite decode the different tone in it. She can see the way his bioelectricity flares briefly around the cowl on his head though. It makes his rofjinn flutter slightly before it settles back down on his shoulders, perfectly still.

Ryder arches an eyebrow and says, “Bold statement.” Her expression eases though, and she chuckles, “Well, I’m very much the same. I’d be interested to know more about you, Jaal. Look for more common factors between us.”

“We are both technicians at heart,” Jaal points out. “And you are not as cold as you think you are. Rational and logical, yes, but not cold.”

Ryder reaches for her welding tool now. She straps on thick, protective gloves and a heavy apron before she slides her welding helmet over her head. Now, she starts scraping off all the dust and ash from her drone and wiping acetone down to make the metal as clean as she can. Then, she runs the welding tool down on it and watches the metal glow with heat. Some sparks fly, but she gets the job done. When she’s done, she sets her tool and gear aside and wipes her brow. Ryder glances back at Jaal who looks at her, and he’s wearing an expression that she knows all too well. It’s one that she wears often as well.  Within the planes of his face, she can see curiosity, interest, and the pure desire to learn how something works. She suspects that she looks very much the same despite the different alien features they each have.

Ryder finishes fixing her drone, and Jaal finishes his material mod to his Lanat. When she stands up to leave, she pauses by the door. She’s not sure if she should say anything to Jaal before she leaves, but Jaal beats her to it. He stands up and extends his arm out in an angaran goodbye. “Stay strong and clear, Pathfinder,” he says.

Ryder rubs the back of her neck and instantly regrets it when she smears motor oil and ash all over her neck. Jaal chuckles and tosses her a clean rag. She uses it to scrub at her skin before she glances up at Jaal and says, “You know, you don’t have to call me Pathfinder all the time. Ryder is fine.”

Jaal takes the rag back and smiles. “Ryder then,” he says. “Stay strong and clear.”

_ “Isharay,” _ she tries. The only reason why she knows that it’s Shelesh for goodbye is because there’s a gun named after it. Still, the word in his own language makes Jaal smile broadly. In turn, a smile flickers around the edges of Ryder’s lips, and she takes her leave.

It feels like a victory. Finding this one common factor between them. Ryder still doesn’t know as much about Jaal, but she was a single step closer. She leans against the wall outside the tech lab and inhales deeply. The air doesn’t have the tang of metal or the scent of Jaal’s soaps like the tech lab smells like; it just tastes like the clinical blandness of recycled air. She didn’t realize how exhilarating the conversation felt. She’s just not used to social scenes, and she finds it ironic that she did something like that within the confines of her own work and her tools. Regardless, it happened, and she’s grateful for it.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, Ryder starts frequenting the tech lab more often instead of hunkering down in her own room. She repairs Liam’s shields, makes a new mod for Drack, and works with some of Lexi’s defunct medical monitors. Jaal is there every time, and as Ryder works, she learns more about him.

He was born on Havarl. He enjoys making things with his hands whether that be modifying tech or creating things like cosmetics and clothes. He enjoys poetry, and Ryder suspects that he sometimes writes his own. He won’t admit that part though, but Ryder wishes she could read one of his poems one day. He just has that way with words that fascinates her. He tells her stories from his childhood. There is one about a wayward child, and the way he concludes the story is so comical that Ryder laughs until her stomach hurts. She doesn’t think she’s laughed this hard in Andromeda before. He is 27 angaran years old. That fact makes Ryder pause and reconsider her own age. She’s technically 600 years older than what she started out with in the Milky Way, and that revelation startles her into silence. 

Ryder collects all of these new facts and carefully stores them away in a mental dossier. The strangest thing that she finds about this entire experience is that the more she learns about Jaal, the more curious she becomes. Normally, learning more about something is enough to satisfy her, but her curiosity grows nigh insatiable. She likes hearing him tell stories about himself. She likes learning about him from his own habits to his culture.

In return, Ryder gives him parts of her that she’s never told anyone else except Scott. Half of it is because she’s never had much time with her crew aside from work-related endeavors. But she tells Jaal. She tells him about how she almost fell off of a Prothean ruin, how she used to watch the artificial sunsets on the Citadel almost religiously, how she and Scott used to watch documentaries together. She tells him about her mother and how her mother taught her everything that she could. 

She even tells him the story about Euclidean algorithm. When Jaal learns about it, he demands that he try it out for himself, so they spend that afternoon, heads bent over the same table, dividing numbers over and over again. Jaal triumphantly holds up the paper when he’s done and shows it to Ryder. “It works!” he crows.

“Of course it does,” Ryder laughs. “It’s supposed to.”

Jaal flashes an easy grin at Ryder, and Ryder suddenly thinks that she could watch him smile for an eternity and more. He’s so genuinely excited by the simple math, and frankly, Ryder wishes she could show him more things to make him that happy again. It’s such a strange and alien notion to her, and she doesn’t remember the last time she felt like this. She’s not sure how to qualify it or define it, and that’ bothers her. She doesn’t like leaving variables so undefined.

But Ryder remembers her mother’s words —  _ it takes time sometimes _ — and settles down to smile at Jaal.


	3. absolute value

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **absolute value** — the magnitude of a number regardless of its sign

They land on Aya with far less trouble than they did the last time they were here. No sirens, no angry Shelesh being screamed at her over the comm, no trouble.

Well, there is trouble in the form of Tann being his usual self. Just before they land, Ryder receives a rather strongly worded message in which he expresses how frustrated he is that Ryder doesn’t come to the Nexus first. Ryder groans and replies back tersely. She won’t go to the Nexus first with the Moshae because the Moshae deserves to go back home to her people. Why would the Moshae come to the Nexus first? And besides, if Tann wants a report from her, can’t he just call her or read her emails? If Tann doesn’t see the reasoning behind that, then let him suffer in his own pit of ignorance. Ryder has little patience for people who cannot see the point of logic.

But other than that, they arrive to Aya with little trouble. Ryder studies Jaal as they land, and she watches the quiet excitement unfurl on his face. Not quite as comparable to when they landed on Havarl — his childhood home — but it’s still endearing to watch. He turns to look at the Moshae and whispers something to her with the same level of excitement.

The city bursts into a flurry of excitement when the Moshae returns. Angara pour out of their homes to celebrate her return, and the crowd at the tavetaan overflow into the streets. There’s music and laughter and drinks all around. Ryder looks around at the commotion and thinks that there’s something charming about the way the angara celebrate. They throw all of their efforts and their energy into it just like they do with any other thing that they do. It’s impressive to see how open and free they are with themselves, and Ryder admires the way that they express themselves so easily.

As for Ryder, she wishes she could join the party in some way, shape, or form. She doubts she would do much. She would probably sit in a corner and sip some juice while watching the festivities. No sense in getting drunk while on the job. But unfortunately, she’s making her way to Resistance headquarters with Jaal to make her report to Evfra.

They walk in, and again, Ryder stifles the urge to examine the building. She never studied architecture quite as much as other subjects, but she had her fair share of studying different styles of buildings while working in the archaeology division. There’s smooth metal coating the walls — or maybe it’s some kind of different plastic, some kind of alloy — and Ryder allows herself to briefly brush her fingertips against the wall as they pass. Jaal gives her a strange look, but when she looks back at him, trying to look innocent, Jaal laughs with knowing eyes.

He understands; they both have hearts built of curiosity.

Ryder tears her eyes away from the peculiar walls and matches Jaal’s stride once more. It takes two and a half of her steps to match Jaal’s single step, and she calculates that it would take Jaal 276 steps to reach Evfra’s location in the base. 276 multiplied by 2.5 would equal… 690. A childish part of Ryder makes her lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile, but she stifles it down and speeds her steps up.

When they reach Evfra, he’s working on his documents again. There’s a map on the interface in front of him and numerous data-pads on the table, blinking with signals that Ryder recognizes from Havarl and Voeld. Jaal and Ryder stop by the edge of the desk and wait for Evfra to finish.

“So, Pathfinder,” Evfra says without looking up. He scrolls through another data-pad and continues, “You brought the Moshae back to us.” Now, he looks up at her and pins her with a razor-edged gaze. It’s less anger and wariness than what Ryder remembers it to be, but the keen scrutiny is still there. “You’re bold,” he comments. “Honest too. If you didn’t inform us about your AI, I would not have allowed you into our mission, and without that…” He pauses and sets down the data-pad. “I do not think we could have rescued the Moshae without you. A point that I did not foresee. It would have been regrettable if you were not there.”

The terseness of his voice doesn’t hide the gratitude hidden underneath it. Ryder knows people like Evfra; she’s one of them as well. She might share the same curiosity as Jaal, but based on core personality alone, she works well with Evfra. Brusque, pragmatic, and efficient. It’s one of the reasons why she prefers to work with Evfra far more than the directors and leaders of the Initiative who are tangled up in notions of power, hierarchy, and knotted emotion stuffed through the cracks of their plans. It’s far easier and quicker to make decisions and carry out actions when working with him compared to someone like Addison or Tann. Kandros comes close, but not quite since Evfra has more influence over decisions.

Ryder dips her head and says, “I find it easier to operate on honesty. Better to go into a battle knowing all the options and advantages you have.”

“Which sets you apart from the kett,” Evfra says. “You’ve gone a long way trying to prove yourself to us, Pathfinder. Jaal’s reports are full of glowing praise. The Moshae says that you are a creature of logic.” He flares the folds of skin along his face and narrows his eyes. “Then, why did you choose Jaal’s advice over the Moshae’s?” he asks. “A creature of logic would opt for the Moshae’s pragmatism over Jaal’s idealism.”

Jaal bristles by Ryder’s side, but Ryder only raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said that this was a cause to celebrate,” she says.

“I do not regret the outcome of this mission,” Evfra replies back shortly. “I welcome the return of our fellow brothers and sisters more than anyone else in this Resistance. However, this doesn’t connect with your previous actions and choices you’ve made before. I need to know your reasoning behind it that you did not care to reveal in your reports and messages back to me. If we are to establish an alliance with the Initiative, I want to know what kind of person I am dealing with before I make the choice.”

Ryder thumbs the center of her palm idly before she slowly says, “I was under the impression that you wanted to free the angara. So I did.”

Jaal blinks at her, and now, he interrupts Evfra to ask, “Just that? Is that the only logic you had behind your decision?”

Ryder bristles at that and snaps, “No, you mentioned it yourself. Your fighters, your scientists, all of your most valuable people were in those pods. If we had those people back in the Resistance, it would bolster our strength and our morale. Believe me, I wanted to destroy the facility. The easiest way to get rid of a problem is to destroy the source of it. Destroying the facility would remove a large amount of kett presence and reduce their numbers significantly. But between reducing kett forces and increasing the strength of the Resistance, I felt that both choices were equally balanced in their risks.” She falters. The weight of Evfra’s gaze feels heavy on her shoulders, but she says quietly, “Just one of them had more personal weight than the other. Because you asked me to. Because you wanted it so badly. And so, I chose that one.”

She remembers the fight well. She remembers trying to calculate the odds of each option and asking SAM to run tests on the probabilities of success. The Cardinal stared at her with such a smug look when Ryder couldn’t come up with a response. Ryder remembers glaring at her back and then looking at the numbers that ran down the interface of her omnitool. But more importantly, she remembers cutting the program off short when Jaal interrupted the Moshae and the Cardinal with so much desperation in his voice. For once, she set aside her equations and chose something beyond her set parameters.

Ryder shakes her head and says, “I know I can be cold. I know I can seem heartless, but I think. I weigh the benefits and drawbacks of a situation before I make a choice. I look at the whole system and then by its parts before I settle on a decision.” She helplessly laughs. “I’m an engineer by trade. That’s what I do. And I thought you would have wanted that more, and it’s a choice that turned out well. Like I hoped. Like I predicted.”

“I… I appreciate that,” Jaal finally says. “More than you might realize. Truly.”

Evfra clicks his tongue and wryly says, “You’re right, you know. If you came back and told me you killed thousands of my people still in chains, I would have been furious, no matter what the Moshae said.” He turns back to his documents. “Very well then, Pathfinder. I will approve Paaran Shie’s request for an embassy on Aya. I trust that you will handle the documents for an embassy with the Initiative. Now for Jaal’s reassignment. I have a place for you among the engineering infiltration team. Your experience with the kett shields on Voeld and the kett’s technology within the base will make you a perfect fit for it.”

“What?” Ryder and Jaal both say at once. They turn to look at each other, but Jaal moves first, stepping towards Evfra and asking, “Why are you reassigning me?”

“Your job here is done,” Evfra tersely replies. “You have completed your mission objectives and filed the necessary reports. I’m satisfied with your performance, and I’m reassigning you. If I recall correctly, this was one of the original jobs you wanted in the Resistance. Why are you protesting now?”

“I… Evfra, I feel that my place is with the Pathfinder,” Jaal says.

Now, Evfra sweeps his data-pads all to the side before placing his full attention on Jaal. It’s an uncharacteristic move from him, and Ryder catalogues the way his face twitches towards irritation and frustration. However, the Resistance leader keeps his face as blank as he can as he snaps, “Why.” The way he cuts the word off short makes the word seem less of a question and more of a demand.

“The Pathfinder…” Jaal begins. He casts a look over to Ryder before he steels himself. Ryder can see the resolve in his face — recognizes the stubborn look starting to set into his expression — and quietly steps aside. She has no place in this, no position within the Resistance and little authority to oppose Evfra aside from the small foothold she got.

“I have followed Pathfinder Ryder to the frozen wasteland of Voeld and the overgrown wilderness of Havarl. I have watched her free our people who were imprisoned by the kett, help our scientists and our engineers, and advance the Resistance’s agenda faster than we’ve ever seen it before,” Jaal says. He takes another step forward until he’s by the desk. He braces his hands palm-down on the desk and stares directly into Evfra’s eyes as he says, “But more than that, I have seen her skill. Ryder is not a soldier. She does not dive to the front in a battle, but instead, she works so that each and every one of us is bolstered during battle. Her drone is there to protect us, and she sacrificed that to save the Moshae. She hacks into enemy shields and overloads them, floods them with viruses, and destroys them so that we can kill them easily. And when it gets rough for us, she focuses her efforts on delivering us medigel.”

He takes a short breath before he says softly, “Evfra, I feel that this is someone extraordinary. We do not need a mindless killer; that is no better than the kett. But we do need someone who knows how to rebuild, how to protect, how to help. I believe Pathfinder Ryder is the one.”

“Jaal, other reports from the Resistance outposts call her borderline rude,” Evfra retorts. He pays no heed to Ryder standing behind Jaal and continues, “The messages from Commander Do Xeel noted that the Pathfinder was brusque and silent at times, that the Pathfinder spent more time dismantling and studying old tech and thinking about her options instead of taking action. She refused to give us an ancient angaran AI which, by all rights, is ours to study and to keep. A message from Havarl’s scientists call her brilliant in her field but lacking in all others. She has earned us more ire with the Roekaar, and she has killed Roekaar members who were family members of some of our top Resistance agents. Are you still willing to forsake a coveted position to follow that kind of alien out into the galaxy?” His voice grows louder and sharper with each sentence, and Ryder cringes.

Jaal glances back at Ryder, and she bites her lip. It’s true. She elected to keep the AI when it asked to stay with SAM, and she understands that she comes off as cold. As much as she hates to admit it, she inherited that from her father as well. Neither had much personal charisma; both her father and Ryder rose through the ranks based on skill, intensity, and tenacity alone. As for the Roekaar, Ryder thumbs the center of her palm as she recalls her time on Havarl. She sent her drone after a pocket of Roekaar and built an artillery turret to eliminate them all after they shot both Peebee and Cora down. She already tried extending a sort of diplomacy to them prior to her fight. In her eyes, she had no other options left. She didn’t know that the angara she killed were tied back to the Resistance in such an intrinsic way. But, it’s true. Regrettably and unfortunately so.

Ryder looks at Jaal, and when their eyes meet, she sees conviction gleaming bright and brilliant in his eyes. He turns back to Evfra and says, “Yes, Evfra, I do. I would follow Ryder out wherever her path takes her because I believe in what she aims to do and because I believe she is a good person. Yes, she is curt and stubborn and cold, but she is _kind_. She is thoughtful and weighs each and every one of her options before she chooses the one that is best. She does this, not just for her Initiative, but for our Resistance as well. She is logical and rational, determined and focused, conscientious and dependable.” Jaal inhales quickly before he murmurs, “I would like to remain by her side.”

Silence passes before Evfra steps once to the side to get a better look at Ryder. “And what do you think?” he asks.

Ryder lowers her gaze and says, “I… I don’t have any authority to interfere with Resistance matters. I will abide by what you decide, Evfra.” She raises her head and says more firmly, “But for what it is worth, I would be grateful and happy to have Jaal continue his travels with us.”

“Hmm,” Evfra grumbles. “Don’t think that’s stopped you from interfering with Resistance matters before, but I appreciate the nod to authority.” He purses his lips and flexes his cowl tightly to the lines of his face. Then, he exhales and says, “Fine. If the Pathfinder is willing to take you, then you may continue your position by the Pathfinder’s side. I will continue to expect your continual reports. And Pathfinder?” He swivels his gaze over to Ryder. “Try not to take more angaran relics from us in the future.”

“Thank you, Evfra,” Jaal blurts out. He says it so quickly that the words seem to run together into one whole word. A smile splits his face, and he can’t help but laugh, “And Evfra, I think you, out of all angara, should not be the one criticizing the Pathfinder on her brusque manner.”

Evfra grimaces at that, but he says no other word in response. Instead, he turns to his documents and says simply, “Dismissed.”

Never in her wildest days could Ryder have predicted that. She wonders how many different paths and alternatives that conversation could have diverged into. She even wonders if she could have procedurally generated a number of outcomes and then find this particular one in there. To Ryder, it seems so improbable that Jaal would defend her _like that_ but it did. It happened that way, and she’s left bowled-over by it.

When she doesn’t follow Jaal out immediately, he takes three steps back — 7.5 steps for Ryder’s feet — and tugs at her sleeve. Ryder jolts out of her thoughts and hurriedly follows after Jaal. She idly counts 2.5 steps over and over again as some way to occupy her mind as she grapples with what Jaal just said.

“I am sorry,” Jaal abruptly says. “I don’t know if I am overstaying my time aboard the Tempest, but I meant what I said. Every word.”

“You heard me as well,” Ryder replies. “I would gladly welcome you aboard any time you wanted. I just…” She stumbles over her words and searches for the right thing to say. Her fingers twitch, searching for something to do, but they grasp on nothing. Jaal reaches out to steady her hands, and she holds onto his hand to settle herself. “I didn’t expect you to think of me like that,” she confesses. “It completely surprised me. I thought you would return to the Resistance after rescuing the Moshae, and I don’t know, the way you described me also… Surprised me. It surprised me a lot.”

“In a good way, I hope,” Jaal rumbles.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Ryder hurries to say. “Oh hell, I’m not good with this kind of thing. I just, you know.”

“I know,” Jaal reassures her. Just before they exit the base, he uses his grip on Ryder’s hands to carefully turn her around so that she’s facing him. He looks deep into Ryder’s eyes and says, “I meant everything that I said. You do not give yourself enough credit. It does not matter if you are human or angara; you have proven yourself to be a person I would be happy to follow to the ends of the galaxy and back.”

The way Jaal looks at the absolute value of her without any extraneous factors like her appearance or her status startles her. Truly, it does. When he looks at her, she’s being completely looked at. She’s not seen as the Pathfinder or an alien; he looks at her as if he’s only looking at the part of her that is Sara Ryder.

Ryder wonders if she could do the same. She remembers how they circled around each other, wary and watchful, for those first few fledgling days before they landed on Havarl for their first mission together. But now, when she looks at Jaal, she thinks about the way his fingers fly so quickly over a kett circuitry board and the way he crafts cosmetics and poetry and other delicate things so easily. He called her kind, but she thinks that Jaal is kinder than she could ever be.

Regardless of their species or their place, Ryder thinks that they’re sharing the magnitudes of their true selves with each other instead of the few parts and pieces that they normally show to others. It’s an alien feeling to her — something that she’s only really shared with Scott — but she welcomes it with a hesitant smile. She’s just starting to realize that it’s not something confined to the space of the tech lab alone.

“Now,” Jaal says. A cheeky smile makes its way across his lips. “Let us join the party.”

“Oh, now, I don’t know about th—“ Ryder starts to say before Jaal tugs her out the door. The festivities have spread even to the street along the Resistance building. The guards outside are tapping their feet to the rhythm of the music thrumming through the air, and the angara have drinks and food in hand as they celebrate. Ryder squints against the sudden brightness of the sun, but when her eyes adjust, she thinks she recognizes some of the faces as the ones rescued from the kett facility. They look weaker and duller in color compared to the other angara, but the joy on their faces makes them seem brighter.

He calls out to a person carrying a platter of drinks and food, and Jaal eyes them critically before selecting a couple. He passes some plates to Ryder, but otherwise, he manages to balance all of the other drinks and plates by himself. He finds a quiet corner with a small table for two and sets them.

Ryder studies the table and the benches, noting the way the supports and struts are triangular in nature. This is another thing about mathematics that she likes. It seems the one of the most consistent things here in this foreign galaxy. Whether it be Andromeda or the Milky Way, triangles remain structurally sound shapes, and geometrical postulates and proofs would still hold up here. She takes a seat and sets the plate down.

“This is a treat for us,” Jaal tells her. “One fruit can only feed one angara, but if we turn it into nutrient paste, we could feed twenty angara.”

“I know you said that the Moshae was important on Aya, but I don’t think I realized the gravity of that until I saw this party,” Ryder says.

“We love the Moshae,” Jaal says simply.

He sets the plates in a single line with drinks at the very end. The foods are cut into smaller pieces, and Ryder assumes that it’s to facilitate easier sharing and distribution of the food. She experimentally prods at one piece of fruit before she looks up at Jaal.

“This is _elmohk_ fruit,” Jaal says as he points at the first fruit. “They grow out of red _elmohk_ flowers. Have you seen the flowers by the Resistance headquarters? Those are _elmohk_ fruit.” He points to the next fruit and explains, “This is _paripo_ fruit, and it grows from the trees you saw in the Memorial Garden. The ones with the blue and purple leaves. It is sweeter than _elmohk_ fruit, so I prefer _paripo.”_

Ryder reaches out to study the slices of fruit. Both the _elmohk_ and _paripo_ slices are yellow in hue, but the _elmohk_ fruit has a slightly harder, textured rind to it with small lumps scattered over its surface. Strangely, the _elmohk_ fruit has seeds coated in a soft green substance. The paripo fruit has fleshy sections within its rind. The next plate has yellow fruit as well, and Ryder points to it and asks, “What about this one?”

“This one is _quilloa_ fruit, and it is the crunchiest out of all of them. They grow out of flowers like the _elmohk_ but these grow out of blue flowers,” Jaal says, “I think someone started a _quilloa_ garden in the Marketplace to expand our fruit reserves. It is not as sweet as the others, but it contains more vital minerals, so it’s considered to be healthier and more efficient. We tend to use this most for nutrient paste.”

Ryder raises her brows at that. “Hey, SAM, can I eat angaran fruit?” she asks. She runs the scanner on each plate, and the orange light flickers over each food.

“My data indicates that each fruit contains a water content above 50%, Pathfinder,” SAM says. “In terms of organic material, the _elmohk_ fruit is composed of 74% water, 25.5% cellulose, and 0.5% trace minerals. The _paripo_ fruit is composed of 77% water, 22% cellulose, and 1% trace minerals. The _quilloa_ fruit is composed of 63% water, 35% cellulose, and 2% trace minerals. All substances should be edible by human standards, but the rind of the _paripo_ fruit may cause indigestion if you consume too much of it, Pathfinder.”

Ryder shrugs, “Sounds good to me.” She tries the _paripo_ fruit first since Jaal said that was the sweetest. She tries to bite through the entire thing, but Jaal reaches over and tears the fleshy section out. It has a stringy texture from what she can visually tell. She pops it into her mouth and starts chewing, but the fruit doesn’t taste sweet at all. Instead, it starts off with a sharp tanginess that eases into a more savory taste. She cocks her head with confusion as she swallows. “Jaal, that’s not sweet,” she says. “That’s savory, almost meaty, actually.”

Jaal wrinkles his nose with confusion. “That should be the sweetest out of all of them,” he says.

Ryder tries the other fruits, and they’re all varying degrees of savory tastes. The _elmohk_ has a spicy aftertaste to it, and the sweetest one — if she absolutely had to pick one — would be the _quilloa_ fruit which Jaal said was the least sweet. The drinks also taste salty and savory to her instead of sweet. There’s a soup that tastes delightfully sweet though, and Jaal’s fingers crackle with bioelectricity as he taps his wrists in deep thought.

“It seems as though human taste buds detect our foods in different ways,” he muses.

Ryder pats his shoulder and says, “If it helps, it didn’t poison me. Better to have conflicting tastes instead of some medical issue.”

Jaal sighs and gathers up the plates and cups to place in a communal dish tub. He extends a hand to her and says, “The food may have been different, but at least we both know how to dance. Would you like to go with me?”

Ryder stares at Jaal’s hand before she squints at him. “I’m not a dancer,” she says. “I don’t think I’m good at this party stuff.”

“I enjoy your company,” Jaal tells her. “That means you are ‘good at this party stuff’ in my opinion. Come, I will teach you if you do not know how.”

“Oh boy,” Ryder mumbles as she takes Jaal’s hand. However, his sheer joy is infectious, and Ryder finds herself laughing as Jaal tugs her into a dance that’s going on. He manages to hurtle her straight into the party where the music is the loudest. She can feel the hairs on the back of her neck raise up from the current of bioelectricity sparking and fizzling from every single angara there. She spots some of her crew members dancing as well. Peebee seems to be in her element the most, and when one angara experimentally reaches out with her bioelectricity, Peebee sends her a wave of biotic energy back. Ryder smiles to herself at that and turns back to Jaal.

She looks at him, and for a split second, she thinks about him. Not as a member of the Resistance, but for the absolute value of the person that is Jaal Ama Darav and the magnitude of his personality and his kindness. She reaches out for his hands, and for the first time in her life, Ryder allows herself to let go of all of her inhibitions. She lets go of her reservations, her concerns, her small worries that seem to stack up on her shoulders, and leans forward to dance and laugh with Jaal.

As she does so, she silently thanks the unpredictable odds that landed her here.

**Author's Note:**

> this was largely written to challenge myself. i know exceptionally little about mathematics and engineering, and this ryder's personality is the polar opposite to the ryder i'm used to writing. so, uh, here we go! i've pre-planned out most of the fic, so i think i'll be pretty consistent with updates rather than my usual style of posting which is sporadic and erratic at best lol
> 
> and yes, i purposefully made my prologue 1234 words long because there are 4 main chapters 🤠


End file.
